Ohio Charter School Report: Ohio tells federal investigators that charter schools are getting better

Ohio tells federal investigators that charter schools are getting better, but evidence isn’t convincing - Break News - Ohio:

Ohio tells federal investigators that charter schools are getting better, but evidence isn’t convincing

As the Ohio Department of Education defends itself in a federal investigation of whether it can properly manage charter schools, reports at home raise questions as to whether the department is being truthful, let alone gaining control of a movement that has cost taxpayers millions of dollars and left thousands of children without adequate academic progress.

Case in point: Next Frontier Academy on Copley Road in Akron.

Potential losses at the school weren’t included in a report to federal investigators because records were so poorly kept the state can’t figure out how much was lost, according to a state audit.

The West Akron school received $530,858 in taxpayer funding over two years for more than 60 students.

An audit for the first year found that the charter school lacked student academic and enrollment information to justify that it should have received tax dollars transferred from Akron Public Schools. The school closed this summer and there is no audit yet of what happened to public assets.

That type of nuanced information was lost in the report to federal investigators.

In working with State Auditor Dave Yost and Attorney General Mike DeWine, Ohio School Superintendent Richard Ross added up the number of charter schools with audits that required a repayment of funds for the years between 2008 and 2014.

Next Frontier’s first year couldn’t be included in Ross’ report because missing records prevented auditors from forming an opinion or issuing a monetary finding for recovery.

Ross’ report to federal investigators touted a 71 percent decline in the number of schools with audits requiring repayment of funds since 2010 (after an especially troublesome year).

A Beacon Journal review of other charter-school audits suggests that there are more like Next Frontier: Not counted because records were in disarray.

Missing the dollars

Ross’ statement to the federal government also failed to make note of another fact: How much public money was misspent in charter schools.

Ross’ spokesperson, Kim Norris, said answers to the Beacon Journal’s questions on that matter are in the report. Speaking to the Columbus Dispatch, she could not tell whether misspending is up or down.

The answer is available on the state’s website.

Auditor Yost maintains a report on misspent dollars at the thousands of public agencies his office monitors. For example, this year his office said a defunct Dayton charter school must return $1.1 million to taxpayers after failing to produce records for 240 students.

A Beacon Journal investigation, which reviewed thousands more audits from 2000 to 2014, found charter schools were far more likely to misspend public dollars than any other government agency.

Charter schools accounted for at least 70 percent of all misused tax dollars in Ohio tells federal investigators that charter schools are getting better, but evidence isn’t convincing - Break News - Ohio:

2015 In Review: Lawmakers Reform Charter Schools While Top Education Officials Come Under Fire | WVXU

2015 In Review: Lawmakers Reform Charter Schools While Top Education Officials Come Under Fire | WVXU:

2015 In Review: Lawmakers Reform Charter Schools While Top Education Officials Come Under Fire

2015 was the year Ohio lawmakers worked to overhaul the charter school system while a data scrubbing scandal was playing out at the state’s department of education. 

In January, when the brand-new Speaker of the House Cliff Rosenberger laid out his priorities for 2015, reforming charter schools was at the top of the list.

House Bill 2 was touted as bringing more transparency and accountability to the charter school system. Stephen Dyer with the liberal-leaning think tank Innovation Ohio said this is a system that has gone fairly unregulated compared to its traditional public school counterpart.

“We need to make it absolutely clear that these are actually public schools and not by just calling them public but by having the duck actually quack and walk like a public entity,” said Dyer.

Republicans and Democrats were unified on most of the issues on the bill. The biggest controversy came when the House failed to hold a vote before leaving for summer break. But the chambers returned and sent a final version to the governor without much debate.

However, during that summer break, it was revealed that the state’s top charter school official, David Hansen, rigged the evaluations, leaving out failing grades for some online schools. This caused a stir among officials who were already big critics of charter schools and had some, including Democratic Representative TeresaFedor, asking if the state’s schools Superintendent Richard Ross had anything to do with the data scrubbing.

“It seems highly unlikely, if not impossible that he had no knowledge of the charter school data scrubbing that happened on his watch,” said Fedor. 

The Ohio Department of Education released more than 100,000 emails, texts and other documents related to the evaluations. None seemed to indicate a cover up. Ross went on to answer a slew of questions during a state board of education meeting in hopes of clearing the air.

“I’ve been very disappointed and upset about this. It is something that is so counter to everything that I believe because I believe in accountability for all schools, doesn’t matter if they’re community schools or if they’re traditional schools,” Ross said.

Hansen resigned in July and a few months later Ross announced that he would retire at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, the state was granted $71 million from the federal government to be used for charter school improvement. But, because of the data scrubbing fallout, the state must meet new conditions before the feds release that money.

2015 will also be known as the year teachers and students prepared for an all-new assessment known as PARCC, only to throw that test out after one use.

PARCC caused headaches for teachers and administrators. Districts experienced glitches with the online version, teachers unions were not pleased by how long they had to wait for the results, and parents thought the testing schedule was too long and put too much pressure on students.

Republican Senator Peggy Lehner of Kettering chaired a committee that held a comprehensive review of PARCC. The group found, among other things, that the tests were taking too long. 

“Once PARCC refused to shorten the test to a point that it was acceptable to the testing group I felt that it was very likely that we would end up dropping PARCC 2015 In Review: Lawmakers Reform Charter Schools While Top Education Officials Come Under Fire | WVXU:

 Big Education Ape: Shame on the Ohio House for pushing off action on critical charter school reform bill:http://bit.ly/1MjatQZ

Big Education Ape: Will John Kasich Stand Up to the Republican Donors Taking Billions from Ohio’s Charter Program? ... http://bit.ly/1MjauVd

Big Education Ape: Could Charter School Scandal Weaken The Kasich Campaign? | John A. Tureshttp://bit.ly/1MjaxAg

A year of change: The top five education stories of 2015 | EdSource

A year of change: The top five education stories of 2015 | EdSource:

A year of change: The top five education stories of 2015

 This year brought several changes to public schools in California, beginning with a robust economy that added billions of dollars to boost K-12 per-pupil spending. In a year of multiple developments, EdSource has selected its top five stories of 2015.  As lawmakers in Sacramento crafted the state budget in the spring, more than 3 million students took on a new challenge — the Smarter Balanced assessments aligned with the Common Core. This month a partisan Congress united in the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, signed by President Barack Obama. The new law replaces the No Child Left Behind Act and gives local school districts more control while reducing the number of standardized tests.

Two laws passed in the waning days of the 2015 Legislature, and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, will have an impact on students and parents. Under one, former high school students who failed the state exit exam can receive their diplomas retroactively, beginning Jan. 1, 2016, if they met all other graduation requirements. The other law, which also goes into effect on Jan. 1, passed despite protests from hundreds of parents and eliminated the “personal belief exemption” that had allowed parents to enroll their children in school without having them vaccinated.

STUDENTS TAKE SMARTER BALANCED ASSESSMENTS FOR FIRST TIME

California joined 16 other states around the country in administering assessments in the spring of 2015 to measure student achievement based on the newCommon Core State Standards in math and English language arts/literacy. The standards, which stress critical thinking and problem-solving, aim to ensure that students acquire 21st century skills in grades K-12 and graduate college and career-ready.

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium created the computer-adaptive tests, which adjusted questions based on students’ answers, to more accurately pinpoint strengths and weaknesses. Questions were more difficult for students who answered them correctly and less difficult for those who did not. Students in 11 other states and the District of Columbia took a different set of tests aligned to the Common Core that were created through the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, or PARCC. California’s tests are part of the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress that also includes science tests and alternative assessments. Students’ scores will be used when measuring future growth.

The state released the scores in September for the more than 3 million California students in grades 3-8 and 11 who took the tests for the first time following a field test in 2014. The results revealed an ongoing achievement gap between white and Asian students and those in other racial or ethnic groups, as well as between students who qualify for free and reduced price lunches and their peers who did not and between English learners and fluent English speakers.

EVERY STUDENT SUCCEEDS ACT APPROVED BY CONGRESS TO REPLACE THE NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND LAW 

Last summer, it looked like California would be stuck with the No Child Left Behind Act until President Barack Obama left the White House. The U.S. House and Senate had passed very different rewrites of the nation’s primary education law, President Obama threatened to veto either version, and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced he was resigning.

But, led by skilled consensus builders Sens. Lamar Alexander, D-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., negotiations came together quickly last month, and on Dec. 11, President Obama signed NCLB’s successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act.

A wide range of state educators and advocacy groups have given thumbs up to the new law’s framework. The new law will allow the Legislature and the A year of change: The top five education stories of 2015 | EdSource:

5 of the Worst Examples of Biased and Distorted Media Coverage of Education in 2015 | Alternet

5 of the Worst Examples of Biased and Distorted Media Coverage of Education in 2015 | Alternet:

5 of the Worst Examples of Biased and Distorted Media Coverage of Education in 2015
There were some big time fails.

2015 was an important year in education policy, with the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the beginning of the 2016 election campaigns, and local fights for teachers and public schools making national headlines. In an important year for students and teachers across the education spectrum, however, some media outlets used their platforms to push falsehoods. Here are five of the worst media failures on public education this year.

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5. Campbell Brown Hired Transphobic, Sexist, Racially Insensitive Writer To "Fact-Check" Education Policy Reporting

This summer, teachers union opponent and former journalist Campbell Brown launched a "non-profit, non-partisan news site about education," called The Seventy Four. In spite of the site's stated mission to combat "misinformation and political spin" with "investigation, expertise, and experience," Brown hired Eric Owens, who has a long history of attacks on students and teachers, to write for the site. Owens has a long history of attacking and mocking teachers and students with transphobic, sexist, victim-blaming, and racially insensitive rhetoric as the education editor at the Daily Caller.

4. National Newspaper Editorials Promoted Anti-Teachers Union Myths 

This year, The Wall Street Journal continued its campaign of misinformation on teachers unions, pushing harmful, union-opposed policies such as a Louisiana voucher program that was found to violate desegregation requirements and a Washington, D.C. voucher program reported to waste federal dollars on "unsuitable learning environments." The WSJ editorial board often explicitly attributed its support of these unsuccessful policies to combating teachers unions. In an October editorial, for example, the board wrote that being "unpopular with unions... ought to be a requirement for any education leadership position," ignoring the troubling realities of the programs they attempted to defend in spite of well-founded union concerns.

As ESSA moved through Congress in late November, the editorial board doubled down on its teacher-blaming rhetoric, claiming that the new legislation was favored by "teachers unions who want less accountability," and advocating for the continuation of unpopular high-stakes testing and voucher 5 of the Worst Examples of Biased and Distorted Media Coverage of Education in 2015 | Alternet:

View: Reconsidering Race to the Top

View: Reconsidering Race to the Top:

View: Reconsidering Race to the Top

A former Regent has some regrets but believes the state board did much important work

In 2000, when my friend, former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, asked me to stand for election to the state Board of Regents, I was reluctant, because it meant giving up my position as chairman of the board of Westchester Community College. But when Richard explained the powers of the Regents and the possibility of helping education more broadly, I put my name up and was elected.

Most people know that the Regents preside over the state Education Department and SUNY, major responsibilities. But the board does much more than oversee education in New York. The board licenses and disciplines all of the licensed professions except lawyers. I headed the professions committee for many years, and we became much tougher on Medicare, Medicaid and insurance fraud — a huge problem costing the country billions of dollars.

The Regents also run the State Museum, Library and Archives and supervise libraries, most museums, historical societies and archives throughout the state. Public radio and TV are also under the board, so I was invited to meet the cast of “Downton Abbey,” a nice perk.

I chaired the higher education committee for several years, during which we closed a number of for-profit colleges and schools that were short-changing students. There are many excellent proprietary schools in New York, but not all.

The work most closely covered by the media is P-12 education. Testing, Common Core, charter schools, the performance of students with disabilities, graduation rates and other subjects are of great public interest. I loved talking about these issues when visiting schools, BOCES and colleges.

Bad decisions

During my tenure on the Regents, we made two really bad decisions: one because we failed to listen to our experts and one because we did listen.

When the federal Department of Education dangled before us $700 million in Race to the Top funds if we complied with their requirements, our experts said it would cost View: Reconsidering Race to the Top:

Experts Share Their Outlooks on K-12 Education in an Era of Broken Schools - The Atlantic

Experts Share Their Outlooks on K-12 Education in an Era of Broken Schools - The Atlantic:

Can Schools Be Fixed?

Experts on K-12 education offer their reasons for optimism and pessimism going forward.

It’s been a tumultuous year for America’s schools—one marked by an expanding minority-student population, an increasingly discontent teaching force, a backlash against standardized testing, and shifting understanding of education reform. It’s seen greater attention on areas traditionally dismissed as nonessential: things like early-childhood education, after-school programs, and project-based learning. It’s also seen evolving attitudes toward discipline, with tactics such as restorative justice starting to replace zero-tolerance approaches, including in high-poverty urban districts. Debates over how to address disparities in achievement have been highly politicized. The ed-tech market has continued to grow.

Education is often touted as a means for boosting social mobility and making communities more equal, but inequality in school funding and resources has made that difficult to achieve, especially amid increasing poverty rates. Segregation in districts, both tacit and explicit, is holding scores of children back, and performance on math and reading assessments has remained relatively stagnant. President Obama has just signed into law an act that will replace the widely despised No Child Left Behind, but whether it’ll succeed in its goals—boosting the attainment of disadvantaged students, reducing the amount of testing taking place in schools, promoting classroom innovation, and so on—is far from guaranteed.

We reached out to some of the leading scholars of, experts on, and advocates for K-12 education, and asked them what, as the year comes to an end, is giving them cause for hope and despair. Below are their answers, lightly edited for length and clarity.

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Joshua Angrist, professor of economics at MIT

Reason for despair: “No Excuses” pedagogy is characterized by a long school day and year, an emphasis on traditional reading and math, extensive use of Teach for America interns, data-driven instruction (just as pro sports teams use data and review video), and an emphasis on discipline and comportment. Our research team and other colleagues have repeatedly and rigorously shown the power of this approach to produce life-changing gains for students who would otherwise do poorly (the “No Excuses” moniker refers to schools and not students: No excuses allowed for a failure to educate). I’m worried because the foundations of this success are under attack: The federal government and many districts now propose to limit the testing that provides essential feedback and accountability. And it has been regular, reliable testing that’s laid the empirical foundation for discussions of school quality and educational inequality. Also worrying: In Massachusetts and elsewhere, concerns about racial imbalance in school discipline are making it harder to use suspension to establish a structured and safe school environment (the primary beneficiaries of which are poor African American children).

Reason for hope: In the 21st-century, administrations from both parties expanded the federal role in education, encouraging reform and experimentation to an unprecedented degree. These policy explorations have been extraordinarily fruitful, yielding findings that are as clear and convincing as any in the history of social science. The most important of these findings is my reason for hope: Although charter schools vary in quality, schools adhering to “No Excuses” pedagogy (like KIPP, and many of the charters in Boston, Denver, New Orleans, and New York) consistently produce spectacular achievement gains for low-income minority students—enough to close the black-white achievement gap in a few years of enrollment. We see this in data from randomized admissions lotteries and from districts (like the New Orleans Recovery School District) that assign responsibility for failing schools to “No Excuses” networks. Research designs exploiting lotteries and takeovers take the guesswork and politics out of the analysis of education policy.

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Charles Best, founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org

Reason for despair: We already know teachers go above and beyond to give their students an excellent education, a lasting love of learning, and the self-confidence to succeed. But teachers can only do so much with the resources they have. More and more, projects on our site tell us that teachers face a large population of young people who go to school cold or hungry. In addition to school supplies, they are requesting food, warmth and care for their students. As a society, it’s time to confront that problem.

Reason for hope: More than ever, students understand that they have the power to shape their own education. We gave young people the access to do that through crowdfunding this year with an expansion into student-led classroom projects. After just a few months, hundreds of students have led the charge by posting projects that matter to their communities. At Ritenour High School—a 15-minute drive from Ferguson, Missouri—one group started a reading buddy program with younger students at their school. Their project, “Reader to Leader: Mentor Program,” delivered 300 elementary-school books for their initiative. It’s just one of more than 840 projects that students have successfully gotten funded on their own terms.

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Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN)

Reason for despair: I despair over the growing number of so-called Religious Experts Share Their Outlooks on K-12 Education in an Era of Broken Schools - The Atlantic:

A Conversation with Dr. Diane Ravitch | netnebraska.org

A Conversation with Dr. Diane Ravitch | netnebraska.org:

A CONVERSATION WITH DR. DIANE RAVITCH

Dr. Diane Ravitch is known as one of our nation’s leading advocates for public education. A renowned professor of education at New York University and former Undersecretary of Education in the George H.W. Bush administration, Ravitch has emerged as a vocal critic of current education strategies. Drawing on over 40 years of experience and research, Ravitch uses her insider knowledge and historian’s perspective to critique both President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act and President Obama’s signature education program, Race to the Top.

 A prolific writer, Ravitch has authored 10 education-focused books and more than 500 articles in scholarly and popular publications. In her most recent book, Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Schools, Ravitch points out her views on the shortcomings of the privatization of public education and outlines her position on how to preserve and improve the nation’s public schools.

During a visit to Omaha to speak to the Metropolitan Omaha Education Coalition, The State of Education in Nebraska had the opportunity to sit down with Dr. Ravitch for an intimate conversation on her research and growing concerns about standardized testing, value-added measures of teacher quality, school choice programs, and their effects on the quality of and community support for public schools.

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VIDEOS

The Balance between School and Community 2:27

The Commercialization of Education 1:07

Look for more Dr. Ravitch videos in early January!

Dr. Ravitch's comments do not reflect the views of NET or The State of Education in Nebraska initiative.

A Conversation with Dr. Diane Ravitch | netnebraska.org:

Hechinger's top stories of 2015 - The Hechinger Report

Hechinger's top stories of 2015 - The Hechinger Report:

Hechinger’s top stories of 2015

 ’s been another big year for The Hechinger Report. We unveiled a new website, held a successful crowd funding campaign and published a record-breaking 652 stories.  If you found it hard to keep up with them all, fear not! We chose some must-reads to squeeze in before the ball drops. (And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter, so you can keep up with all the stories we’ll produce in 2016.)

Our five most viewed stories of the year:

The graduation rates from every school district* in one map:  Previously, if you wanted to compare graduation rates across the country, you had to rely on state averages from the federal government. We decided that’s not good enough. Since we’re becoming a little obsessed with high school reform,Hechinger data editor Sarah Butrymowicz gathered district-level data and created a map that let’s you see how your town compares to others across the country.

As Mississippi delivers bad news to 5,600 third graders, stressed-out parents say there must be a better way: OurMississippi coverage followed a tense year for education reform in that state, including this in-depth look at the ramifications of a new law that third-graders cannot be promoted without passing a test to prove they are adequate readers. Nearly 15 percent of the state’s third graders failed the test on their first try.                                                                                                                                                                  
Memorizers are the lowest achievers and other Common Core math surprises: Jo Boaler, a professor of mathematics at Stanford University, stirred up readers with her argument that “we don’t need students to calculate quickly in math. We need students who can ask good questions, map out pathways, reason about complex solutions, set up models and communicate in different forms.”

Want high schoolers to succeed? Stop giving them fifth-grade schedules: Who knew class scheduling could be so controversial? Nick Stoneman, president of Minnesota’s Shattuck-St. Mary’s school, attacked “the typical one-size-fits-all daily schedule known widely as ‘cells and bells.’” Instead, he argued, high school students should be allowed to manage their own time.

Common Core’s unintended consequence? According to many teachers, experts and advocates of the Common Core, traditional curriculum sources haven’t been meeting the demands of the new set of math and English standards that have been rolled out in more than 40 states in the past few years. More and more teachers are scrapping off-the-shelf lessons and searching for replacements on the Internet or writing new curriculum materials themselves.

Other great reads you may have missed:

Is the future of education robots bumping into walls? Blended learning fellow Nichole Dobo visited a school in Ohio where many 

Hechinger's top stories of 2015 - The Hechinger Report:

Feds say too few students took required tests in 148 CT schools | The CT Mirror

Feds say too few students took required tests in 148 CT schools | The CT Mirror:

Feds say too few students took required tests in 148 CT schools

After thousands of Connecticut students failed to take required statewide achievement tests last spring, federal officials want to know what Connecticut education leaders are doing to ensure it doesn't happen again.

"The U.S. Department of Education is concerned that Connecticut's participation rate did not meet requirements of [federal law]," Moninque M. Chism, the director of the agency's Office of State Support, wrote Connecticut's education commissioner last month. "Let me emphasize the importance of a high-quality, annual statewide assessment system that includes all students so that local leaders and educators have the information they need to help every student succeed."

The state was required to send its plans to improve compliance to the U.S. education department earlier this month, but spokesmen for both the federal and state education departments were unable to provide any details about those plans Monday.

Numerous Connecticut Mirror requests since August for documents showing any guidance the state has provided to districts to boost participation have gone unanswered.

About 11,200 students did not take the state exams last school year — a growing trend referred to as the "opt-out movement." It coincides with growing concern among parents that their children are spending too much school time being tested or prepared for tests.

While Connecticut's statewide participation rate did meet the federal standard, many individual districts did not. One-quarter of public school districts did not test at least 95 percent of their students, the minimum participation rate the federal government expects.

High school students missing the exams were to blame for most of the decline. Of the 148 schools where too many students missed the statewide Smarter Balanced Assessment, nearly three-quarters were high schools. (Curious how many students skipped the test in your school? Click here to find out.)

Connecticut lawmakers earlier this year voted to replace the Smarter Balanced Assessment for high school students with the SAT, an exam many students take regardless.

Aimed at removing one of the many tests high school students must take, it's unclear whether this shift will improve participation rates.

The federal government's letter to Connecticut Education Commissioner Dianna Wentzell emphasizes that the state could lose millions in funding if too many students sit out again.

CTMIRROR.ORG FILE PHOTO

A Bridgeport student takes a Smarter Balanced practice test.

The federal education department "has a range of enforcement actions at its disposal… The State Education Agency should demonstrate that it has taken or will take appropriate actions to enforce the requirements."

The state's enforcement actions could include cutting funding to school districts, lowering a school's rating, identifying a school as 'high risk' or counting non-participants as non-proficient on the exams.

When releasing the results of this years' exams, Wentzell was vague about how the state plans to address low participation rates and whether funding would be in jeopardy.

"We are going to work with our districts to ensure that we have similar levels of participation," she said. "When the final analysis is done, I believe, it will be a handful, literally, of Feds say too few students took required tests in 148 CT schools | The CT Mirror:

 

“We do not count within the political process” —Chris Hedges

teacher/poet/musician/watch cat: “We do not count within the political process” —Chris Hedges:

“We do not count within the political process” —Chris Hedges

 “…This truth, emotionally difficult to accept, violates our conception of ourselves as a free, democratic people. It shatters our vision of ourselves as a nation embodying superior virtues and endowed with the responsibility to serve as a beacon of light to the world. It takes from us the ‘right’ to impose our fictitious virtues on others by violence. It forces us into a new political radicalism. This truth reveals, incontrovertibly, that if real change is to be achieved, if our voices are to be heard, corporate systems of power have to be destroyed. This realization engenders an existential and political crisis. The inability to confront this crisis, to accept this truth, leaves us appealing to centers of power that will never respond and ensures we are crippled by self-delusion.


“The longer fantasy is substituted for reality, the faster we sleepwalk toward oblivion. There is no guarantee we will wake up. Magical thinking has gripped societies in the past. Those civilizations believed that fate, history, superior virtues or a divine force guaranteed their eternal triumph. As they collapsed, they constructed repressive dystopias. They imposed censorship and forced the unreal to be accepted as real. Those who did not conform were disappeared linguistically and then literally.

“The vast disconnect between the official narrative of reality and reality itself creates an Alice-in-Wonderland experience. Propaganda is so pervasive, and truth is so rarely heard, that people do not trust their own senses. We are teacher/poet/musician/watch cat: “We do not count within the political process” —Chris Hedges:

You say you want a revolution

With A Brooklyn Accent: What Is The Paper Clip Revolution?: 

What Is The Paper Clip Revolution?

The paper clip became a symbol of resistance in Nazi Occupied Norway. Thousands of Norwegian teachers who refused to teach the fascist curriculum were sent to prison camps. The resistance of these teachers, as well as over 200,000 parents caused the government to abandon their plan. We as educators have decided to use this symbol to catalyze resistance to the privatization, corruption and profiteering that threaten to destroy public education in the United States. Hence we are launching "The Paper Clip Revolution"

This group will generate symbols that are easily duplicated and displayed to build resistance and morale among teachers students and parents and to undermine the parasites and bullies who have hijacked education policy We will also propose actions that make use of those symbols to give power back to educators.

One portion of this effort will be Honey Badger Squads, groups of retirees, parents and professors who will confront and challenge superintendents and principals who harass and humiliate teachers and students.

 Big Education Ape: 1942 Norwegian Teachers’ Nonviolent Resistance to Nazis | PopularResistance.Org http://bit.ly/1YPRtv6

The Charter School Business (Racket)

The Charter School Business:

The Charter School Business

And how to keep it from being the charter school racket: An interview with Bruce Baker.

Rachel M. Cohen is a writing fellow at The American Prospect

AP Photo/The Topeka Capital-Journal, Ann Williamson

Tong Athwai, 16, studies during his Intro to Algebra class at the Highland Park Success Academy in Topeka, Kansas. 

Rutgers University professor Bruce Baker is a longtime expert on charter schools, which are in the crosshairs of a nationwide debate over school performance standards. Recently, Baker, and his colleague Gary Miron,authored a study about the ways in which individuals, companies, and organizations profit through laws and regulations governing the charter school sector. In an interview with The American Prospect, Baker discusses some of the most egregious policy problems, and steps that governments could take to fix them. What follows is an edited transcript.

Rachel Cohen: Your report explores what you call, “The Business of Charter Schooling.” Has this been studied much before?

Bruce Baker: I don't think it's been systematically studied because I don't think there are many unified data sources for this information—it’s more like investigative reporting. I had been repeatedly asked to look into charter school real estate deals and things like that but getting good data just isn't easy. This was really just a first cut at summarizing the business practices and financial transactions occurring in the charter sector, and what policy structures encourage or permit these things to happen.

RC: You say that current laws and policies governing charters are increasing the privatization of public schooling. What do you mean?

BB: I want to be careful on this issue of ‘privatization’ because I don't think the intent of our report was to say that public policy is promoting privatization, or that privatization is necessarily bad or good. But there is a long line of case law that carefully parses under what circumstances, and in what settings, certain activities of charter schools are public or private. I’ve coauthored law review articleswhere we discuss extensively how the charter school industry claims it is “private” when dealing with questions of employee rights, student discipline policies, student handbooks, or contracts, and “public” in other respects.

The idea put forth in our report is that there are certain policy structures, and in some cases lack of policy controls, that are permitting more extensive degrees of privatization in some states. Sometimes it just makes business sense for charter operators, good or bad, or it affords them a way to do something more quickly or cheaply. But I think that some actors in the charter world such as Imagine Schools, White Hat, and Charter Schools USA, are taking advantage of these opportunities in ways that are self-enriching and not in the public interest.

RC: What are some examples?

BB: Sometimes charter providers take actions that are illogical and inefficient from a public policy standpoint, but it might simply be what they have to do to get by. For example, sometimes charter providers create third-party entities, and then pay rent for the school facilities to these new entities. Since charters can't directly The Charter School Business: